Dave,

Here is a link to

"Faces only a mother could love ?
Or is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder ?"
http://www.orchidworks.com/orchids/rogues.html

which has a few weird ones.

Most beautiful is a trick question, and you will get different answers from
different people. Personally I think that Vandas are the most beautiful, but
I wouldn't risk trying to grow one. Of the more manageable varieties
Phalaenopsis, Paphs, Miltaniopsis, Cattleyas and Dendrobiums have quite a
few beautiful ones. Also I think that a group of well-chosen diverse orchids
is my far more beautiful than any individual one.

I find Phals and Paphs to be the easiest to grow, but not everyone agrees on
that. Many of them are very commonly available and thus not expensive, plus
because they are relatively common it is easy to get instructions on growing
conditions.

Which orchids are "easiest to grow" will depend on the grower's environment.
I grow orchids on eastern and northern windowsills of an apartment/condo
with supplemental lights in the Washington DC area. If I lived in southern
Florida, I would could probably grow Vandas in my garden, and they could be
very easy to grow then. Now if I had a greenhouse with an automated
sprinkler system that could water mounted orchids once a day, then a lot of
orchids that are currently hard to or impossible to grow for me might be
easy. See what I mean?

One thing to know is that as a rule of thumb "the most expensive orchid dies
quickest" or "an orchids chances of survival are inversely proportional to
the price you pay for it." :-) The rarest and the most expensive are likely
to go hand in hand.

Searching for most expensive orchid in Google got me the following results:
http://www.newsgd.com/pictures/scenery/200501270034.htm
"The orchid, which was sold for record 1.68 million yuan (US$202,000). It
was cultivated by Shenzhen Nongke Group, which is engaged in agricultural
science research." This link unfortunately does not specify the type of
orchid, but the picture looks to me like a Cymbidium? I may be wrong on
this. Now Cyms are not usually expensive, so this would have had to be a
rare cross and/or a huge well-grown specimen plant (?).
[Searching for the Shenzhen Nongke Group orchid in Google, I found the
following:
Orchids can still fetch high prices and a variegated leaf Cymbidium Golden
Damo was sold for $22,000 US dollars in China this year (nearly £100,000) by
the Shenzhen Nongke Group.
(http://www.rhs.org.uk/news/pressrele...show040805.asp) -- this is
likely the same orchid, however, there is a difference between $202,000 and
$22,000 :-)
]

OR
http://romecentral.com/article_list_...0the%20Orchids
"With regard to this, the world's most expensive orchid is Neofinettia
Falcata 'Brown Bear' from Japan; it is only a few inches tall and divisions
can be purchased for $75,000."

Then I saw another link claiming that the most expensive orchid in the world
is the Rothschild's Slipper Orchid, and in general several sites claimed
that divisions of rare slipper orchids (mostly Paphs) will fetch the highest
prices.

Anyone have any better data on that?

Searching for world's largest orchid, I found this

http://www.lonker.net/travel_borneo_1.htm
In the lowland hill forests is the world's largest orchid, the Tiger Orchid,
Grammatophyllum speciosum, an epiphyte up to 15 feet long, weighing as much
as 2 tons with yellow or cream colored flowers up to 6 in across.

I am not sure whether this is indeed the largest or whether this site (which
is promoting travel to Borneo) is mistaken. However, it certainly sounds
like a really large orchid to me. :-) Note that the above link refers to the
size of the plant. If you want to know the world's largest orchid flower,
that's a different question.

I look forward to other people's responses to this thread.

Joanna

"Dave Thompson" wrote in message
...
Just a light hearted inquiry to this group from a new non-lurker.

What do you think is the weirdest, most beautiful, and ugliest orchids?

How about hardest and easiest to grow, largest, smallest, rarest, most
expensive.

Just getting into the orchid frame of mind and would like some fun info.